31/10/2013

A special request from the kidlets for a spooky dinner. Sausage hat witch with carrot for a nose and peas for eyes. This Halloween treat has gone down a storm :-D I also had a crack at making pumpkin soup. It was a pretty simple recipe, just pumpkin and onion with a potato and a carrot simmered in stock and whizzed up in a blender. Tastes lush!

30/10/2013

We've been carving a pumpkin today, the kids went to town drawing on a face each and poor mummy had to do all the scooping and mucking out guts because my three year old and five year old decided together that "it is too mucky!". Happy (nearly) Halloween, Jolene xx

29/10/2013

My special bead for Beads of Courage this week is a slightly more grown up take on a Christmas themed bead. It is still quite large, over an inch across, but I have decorated it with simple holly and berries.

I just wanted to take a moment to remember that Childhood Cancer affects teens and young adults too.

For more information on how to Be Child Cancer Aware and find out about the Beads of Courage program here in the UK please visitwww.bechildcanceraware.org

28/10/2013

My first collection for September was inspired by the changing of the season as we move towards autumn and the leaves begin to turn. I've used CiM Indigo, CiM Clockwork and Reichenbach Black and Sherbet Dib Dab shards.

The first beads I have to show are some fun hearts made with some of the Vetrofond odd colours from 2007. The first is Smoke rings and I have finished it with a harvest murrini raked into a heart shape.

Next up is a sweet pair of earring beads made with Effetre Uranium Yellow and pretty flowers using the Clockwork flower cane.

I also have this fab focal to show, the base glass is a combination of Effetre Dark Teal and CiM Aloe Juice with Sherbet Dib Dab shards.

Noel is a classic mix of traditional Christmas colours. I've used Effetre Petrol Green, Effetre Special Red with Peace and Goldstone.

I must confess that I used the majority of the cane from this collection during October to make smowman scarves. This fella is wrapped up warm with a candy striped cane.

And this poppet here has a snuggly sparkly scarf made from goldstone ribbon twistie :-D

Last I want to show you a pair of heart beads that have Noel murrini
accents. There are lot of reelections on the black heart in his photo but
hopefully you can make out that I've raked the murrini into a heart
shape too.

It is now possible to join the Mini Mo' Club via Etsy for 3, 6, 9 or 12
month long subscriptions. Please check out my shop link for more info.Frit N Chips lampwork supplies.

27/10/2013

I been accepted for a regular pitch at my local artisan craft market so you will now be able to come and brows my glassy goodies and see me demo lampwork bead making at The Duck Pond. My first fair will be a weekender Christmas Market and it is just a three weeks away so today I have been playing about with some display and packaging solutions.

Earring note cards

I've come up with a sweet little solution using some note cards and
envelopes that I have been hoarding for some time. This will help keep
everything looking clean and crisp if the weather takes a turn for the wet
and windy!

Hopefully these will
hit the mark with shoppers as lovely little stocking fillers :-D I've
nearly got everything together for a portable demo set up and now the
date is getting close I'm feeling quite excited!

26/10/2013

Afternoon, here is a lovely and quick project that the kids and I made over the summer hols, using beetroot as a natural dye for homemade play dough. My lovely pal Sue sent me the link to this super blog post that offers up a good selection of natural dye suggestions and it was an irresistible temptation to go pick a beetroot from the lottie.

I chopped up the beetroot in to big ish chunks and boiled with a little bit of water to leach the colour out of the beetroot and then sieved out the lumps then I cooked the dyed water over a low heat in an old saucepan with a cup of flour, ½ cup of salt, 1 tablespoon of cream of tartar and 1 tablespoon of cooking oil. The mixture came together in the pan very quickly and was so easy to make. It was a big hit with the kids - and none of that odd manufactured playdoh smell! It kept pretty well too, I wrapped it in tin foil between play times and it was moist and workable for weeks.

24/10/2013

Another quick post and run from me today, this is my entry for the Operation Tackle That Bead Stash October challenge. It my first entry for a seed beading competition as I am such a newbie all things seed beady.

The cab is one of my own, especially made for the challenge. I glued the cab on to interfacing and bead embroidered a line of size 11 beads around the cab as a border the built the bezel up with Peyote stitch then embellished it with size 11 and size 15 seed beads after the cab was secure. It was great fun :-D

23/10/2013

A quick post and run this morning, here is my week 43 bead for Beads of Courage. I have been making an extra special bead each week this year to donate to Be Child Cancer Aware, the charity that runs Beads of Courage here in the UK.

Hopefully this one will bring a great big cheery smile to a really brave kiddo :-D

22/10/2013

I first saw Lynn Davy's work on a lovely lampworking forum called Frit Happens! way back in 2007. To say I was blown away is putting it mildly. I love her style and use of colour and the complexity of her work. Over the years I have gotten to know Lynn well and she is amoung the loveliest people I know, talented, imaginative, caring and hugely supportive, hard working and an all round great gal.

I am delighted to show off Lynn's stunning designs that incorporate some of my handmade beads, a real visual treat..

I hope you have enjoyed the eye-candy and Lynn's beautiful photography
Have a great day, Jo x

21/10/2013

Yesterday I decorated the ground floor of the dolls house. It was loads of fun and really very tricky! The only way I could get inside the tiny spaces was to lay on my tummy on the floor and wriggle up close, quite funny. My daughter picked out all of the paper, it is 1/12th scale but seems to work in the 1/16th scale house well. I painted the eaves with some acrylic paint ready for the next fun project for the tiddlers. I am hoping to get them finger painting a flower mural. Pretty pleased with how it is looking, it is beginning to look loved.

20/10/2013

I'm running a little behind on my Mini Mo' blogging and am planning to get up to date over the next few days, starting with August. My first collection is called Toffifee, it is a scrumptious collection of coffee, caramel and toffee tones.

Here is a fabby bead showing what the 3d flowermurrini in this first collection look like under a deep encasing layer. I have a tutorial on my blog here showing how to use Tonbodama style 3d flower murrini.

This cool focal uses Toffifee cane to form the flower, stem and leaves. The flower sits on top of silvered Cookie Dough shards.

I made this set of shell using wraps of twistie cane. The reulsts are nowhere near true to life but is fun and effective.

This trio of kitsch mushies use toffifee canes to lovely effect as swipes to create petals, leaves and dots.

I love this bright collection which uses glass in every colour of the rainbow. In this Mini Mo' image you can see a rainbow flower murrini, the tutorial here shows how I get the best out of using this king of glass embellishment.

This lovely set of autumnal pillow beads over CiM Nutmeg uses the orange and yellow canes as dots o make detailed petals.

I've used one of the blue caned to swipe on large petal onto this pretty partially encased barrel shaped focal bead.

A series of rainbow twistie wrapped sculpted Scallop shell beads. They are ever so bright and pretty.

It is now possible to join the Mini Mo' Club via Etsy for 3, 6, 9 or 12
month long subscriptions. Please check out my shop link for more info.Frit N Chips lampwork supplies.

19/10/2013

We planted sprinkled a random pack of seeds around in the garden this year, a flower mix designed to attract bees and butterflies. These were the surprise of the summer, just 3 of these gorgeous plants grew in among the Poppies and Marigolds. There was just one in each colour and after asking around I think now they may be Asters, whatever they are they were a wonderful splash of colour and I adore them.

18/10/2013

Today I am looking at three delicious shades of red glass. The first is a real favourite of mine CiM Valentine, which is part of the Messy Color regular line. It is a delicious dark red opaque that keeps it's rich colour and opacity as fine stringer work and as tiny dots.

Next up are two of the newest ltd run releases, Radio Flyer and Bing. Radio Flyer is a glorious bright mid toned red. In the solid heart bead (pictured left) you can just see a small amount of transparency left after all of the repeated heating, cooling and pressing to form the heart shape.

Bing is a lovely shade of red that tends a little towards orange. It is much brighter than Radio Flyer and it has opacified much less in as a solid heart bead.

Next I wanted to check out how the reds looked as different size dots. Valentine, the only opaque, kept it's colour beautifully. Radio flyer came into its own when used in tiny quantities for dot work, it looks even more vivid, almost Scarlet even, over Effetre white.

Bing looks very different when used for dots, the orange tone is more apparent and the results are very pretty, like strawberry jelly.

Next I made an ocean bead with three baby red mud crabs, the left one is Valentine, the middle Radio Flyer and the last is Bing. The Radio Flyer crab has became semi opaque whilst the Bing one remained much more transparent (the Bing crabs claws are semi opaque and were worked longer in the flame than the body). I found all three of these lovely reds easy to work with, smooth to melt, hard to boil and neither of the transparent glasses needed to be struck.